DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
You may leave your opinion,
but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Lining Up Early For The Inauguration

Picture of the large crowd lining up for the Inauguration Of President
Obama.

The ‘40 Percent’ Myth - The figure gun control advocates are throwing around is false.

Gun-control advocates have recently been throwing around an impressive new number. President Obama used it last Wednesday, claiming: “as many as 40 percent of guns are purchased without a background check.” Vice President Biden and everyone from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to USA Today repeatedly use it. That “fact” provided the principal support for his first announced gun-control proposal, “universal background checks.” But unless you include family inheritances and gifts as “purchases,” it is simply false.
The Brady Act background checks currently prevent someone who buys from a federally licensed dealer from buying a gun if he has a felony, or in many cases a misdemeanor conviction, or has been involuntarily committed for mental illness. Prior to Brady, federal law merely required that people sign a statement stating that they did not have a criminal record or a history of mental problems under threat of perjury. Obama’s 40 percent claim makes it look like a lot of gun buyers are avoiding these checks.

Actually, the number reported was a bit lower, 36 percent, and as we will see the true number of guns “sold” without check is closer to 10 percent. More important, the number comes from a 251-person survey(PDF) on gun sales two decades ago, early in the Clinton administration. More than three-quarters of the survey covered sales before the Brady Act instituted mandatory federal background checks on February 28, 1994. In addition, guns are not sold in the same way today that they were sold two decades ago.
The number of federally licensed firearms dealers (FFLs) today is only a fraction of what it was. Today there are only 118,000; while back in 1993 there were over 283,000. Smaller dealers, many operating out of their homes, were forced out by various means, including much higher costs for licenses.
The survey asked buyers if they thought they were buying from a licensed firearms dealer. While all FFLs do background checks, those perceived as being FFLs were the only ones counted. Yet, there is much evidence that survey respondents who went to the very smallest FFLs, especially the “kitchen table” types, had no inkling that the dealer was actually “licensed.” Many buyers seemed to think that only “brick and mortar” stores were licensed dealers, and thus reported not buying from an FFL when in fact they did.
But the high figure comes primarily from including such transactions as inheritances or gifts from family members. Putting aside these various biases, if you look at guns that were bought, traded, borrowed, rented, issued as a requirement of the job, or won through raffles, 85 percent went through FFLs; just 15 percent were transferred without a background check.
If you include these transfers either through FFLs or from family members, the remaining transfers falls to 11.5 percent.
We don’t know the precise number today, but it is hard to believe that it is above single digits.
Nevertheless, even if few purchases avoid background checks, should we further expand the checks? It really depends on how the system would be implemented.
We have to realize that the current system of background checks suffers from many flaws, some causing dangerous delays for people who suddenly need a gun for self-defense, such as a woman being stalked by an ex. In addition to crashes in the computers doing the checks, 8 percent of background checks are not accomplished within two hours, with almost all of these delays taking three days or longer.
Obama made many other false statements during his talk. He asserted that “over the last 14 years [background checks] kept 1.5 million of the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun.” But these were only “initial denials,” not people prevented from buying guns.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms dropped over 94 percent of those “initial denials” after just preliminary reviews. Virtually all the remaining cases were dropped after further investigation by ATF field offices or the Department of Justice. Few of these “initial denials,” 62 people or about 0.1 percent, involved strong enough evidence to be consideration for prosecution. Just 13 pleaded guilty or were convicted.
Delays are undoubtedly just an inconvenience for most people buying guns. But for a few, it makes a huge difference in their ability to defend themselves against assailants. Indeed, my own research suggests these delays might actually contribute to a slight net increase in violent crime, particularly rapes.
Clearly, criminals are seldom stopped by the checks. That isn’t really too surprising because even when guns were banned in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, or even in island nations such as the U.K., Ireland, and Jamaica, criminals still got guns and murder rates rose after the bans.
No amount of background checks on private transfers would have stopped the Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Colorado massacres.
Expanded background checks might well be reasonable, but only if the current system is fixed. Passing laws may make people feel better, but they can actually prevent people from defending themselves. — John Lott is a former chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission and the author of the expanded third edition of More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Another diversion: Democrats launch plan to turn Texas blue!

National Democrats are taking steps to create a large-scale independent group aimed at turning traditionally conservative Texas into a prime electoral battleground, crafting a new initiative to identify and mobilize progressive voters in the rapidly-changing state, strategists familiar with the plans told POLITICO.

The organization, dubbed “Battleground Texas,” plans to engage the state’s rapidly growing Latino population, as well as African-American voters and other Democratic-leaning constituencies that have been underrepresented at the ballot box in recent cycles. Two sources said the contemplated budget would run into the tens of millions of dollars over several years - a project Democrats hope has enough heft to help turn what has long been an electoral pipe dream into reality.

At the center of the effort is Jeremy Bird, formerly the national field director for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, who was in Austin last week to confer with local Democrats about the project.

Two-thirds of U.S. weapons owners would 'defy' a federal gun ban

An interesting little factoid has emerged from a new Fox News poll of U.S. voters: Personal sentiments are strong and defiant among many U.S. gun owners.
Question 46 in the wide-ranging survey of more than 1,000 registered voters asks if there is a gun in the household. Overall, 52 percent of the respondents said yes, someone in their home owned a gun. That number included 65 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of conservatives, 38 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of liberals.
But on to Question 47, addressed to those with a gun in their home: "If the government passed a law to take your guns, would you give up your guns or defy the law and keep your guns?"
The response: 65 percent reported they would "defy the law." That incudes 70 percent of Republicans, 68 percent of conservatives, 52 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of liberals...

Now They Tell Us: Obama's Tax Promises Were Bogus!

Remember all those mainstream news reports before the election about how President Obama's expansive spending plans would require massive tax hikes on everyone, not just millionaires and billionaires? Neither do we.

But somehow after the election, reporters are finally admitting that Obama's budget numbers simply don't add up and that new taxes on the middle class — including a European-style value added tax — are "inevitable."

Wrong on Women Warriors (The new policy to place women in combat units is a mistake)

We have apparently arrived at the Golden Age, free from strife and the threat of foreign enemies. Little else can explain so gratuitous a decision as to place women in combat units. The downsides to such a policy are legion and obvious; the only reason to pursue it is to placate feminism’s insatiable and narcissistic drive for absolute official equality between the sexes.
Any claim that our fighting forces are not reaching their maximum potential because females are not included is absurd. The number of women who are the equal to reasonably well-developed men in upper-body strength and who have the same stamina and endurance is vanishingly small. Because the number of women who will meet the military’s already debased physical-fitness standard will not satisfy the feminists’ demand for representation, the fitness standard will inevitably be lowered across the board or for women alone, as we have seen in civilian uniformed forces.
Feminists routinely deny Eros — except when it suits them to exploit their sexual power. Only someone deliberately blind to human reality could maintain that putting men and women in close quarters 24 hours a day will not produce a proliferation of sex, thus introducing all the irrational passions (and resulting favoritism) of physical attraction into an organization that should be exclusively devoted to the mission of combat preparedness. Reported “sexual assaults” will skyrocket, and of course it will only be the men who are at fault. Any consensual behavior leading up to the “assault” — getting in bed with your fellow grunt drunk and taking off your clothes, for example — will be ignored, since in the realm of sexual responsibility, women remain perpetual victims, at the mercy of all-powerful men. Expect a windfall to the gender-sensitivity-training industry, which will be called in both before and after the entry of women into combat units to eradicate endemic male sexism.
Even if Leon Panetta intends to keep female fighting units sex-segregated, that distinction won’t last. Feminists will complain that female-only units stigmatize women.
Chivalry is one of the great civilizing forces, taming men and introducing social graces and nuance to what would otherwise be a brutish social world. It is already on life support, but sex-integrated combat units will provide the coup de grâce. If a woman is taken prisoner, will special efforts be made to rescue her to save her from the risk of rape? If so, the necessary equality among unit members will be destroyed. If, however, policy requires that she take her chances along with the male captives, we are requiring men to squelch any last remaining vestige of their impulse towards protection and appreciation of female difference.
I am not aware of any comparable crusade to create gender-integrated football teams. At least America knows what’s really important.
— Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Hillary Clinton’s Management Failure

During her congressional testimony today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly defended her failure to see key cables dealing with Benghazi by noting how many cables the State Department receives. She explained there are 1.4 million cables to the department a year, all addressed to her as secretary.

That’s wrong — and this poor excuse is worth examining.

In fact, every cable sent from the department is signed “Clinton” as long as she is in Washington. If not, each cable bears the name of the acting secretary — usually deputy secretary Bill Burns. But it’s obvious that these cables are not actually from her, and many bear captions like “From the Assistant Secretary to the Ambassador.”
Similarly, cables sent to the department are not all to her; that is nonsense. They may be captioned “to SecState Washington,” but that of course means “to the Department.” They will often say for whom they are meant, e.g., “For NSC Powers, for DOD International Security Affairs, for State DRL, NEA, PM” and so on. And upon arrival at State they are distributed in accordance with set rules, to many bureaus and offices.
So which cables does the secretary actually see? There are two answers. First, an ambassador can caption a cable “From the Ambassador for the Secretary” or even “Eyes Only for the Secretary.” Obviously an ambassador can only rarely get away with this and his justification better be good. Such a cable will get to the secretary unless staff finds that it is foolish or worthless. One question not asked of Clinton: Did Chris Stevens ever send a cable during his entire tenure marked “From the Ambassador to the Secretary” and, if so, what did it say?
More often, a secretary of state sees the cables that his or her staff pulls out because they are important and should be seen. Figuring out what the incumbent secretary wants to see, will wish to see, and will be angry for not having seen is very difficult when there’s a new secretary — but what is Hillary Clinton’s excuse on September 11, 2012, after almost four years in office? There had been three and half years to set up a system, to let the career officers of the Secretariat and the Operations Center know what she wants, and to have her personal staff figure it out too.
That is to say, if she did not see the Benghazi cables in a timely fashion, if she did not see Chris Stephens’s cables describing the deterioration of security, and if she did not see his requests for more security, this was a huge management failure on her part. It is a poor excuse to say, “Gee, the Department gets lots of cables” — and perhaps even worse then to hide behind an Accountability Review Board that pins responsibility on assistant secretaries and no higher.
Having worked as an assistant secretary of state and a deputy national-security adviser, I can report that even in those posts one is entirely swamped by cable traffic and needs a system to cope with it — to be sure that the really important ones get through. From all the available evidence, Hillary Clinton failed to establish such a system for herself, and that management failure is a far more important fact about her tenure than being the third woman to hold the post or having flown more miles than Condoleezza Rice.

The Democrats Want You to Die (Yes They do)

I'm beginning to detect a theme running throughout the Democrat Party's proposals.
Actually, the theme is about as subtle as a icepick in Sicily, so I'm quite surprised that I haven't noticed it before.
OK, I HAVE noticed it before, I just haven't noticed it EVERYWHERE two or more liberal proposals are gathered in Pelosi's name.
So anywho, as I was saying: After much stoic reflection, I've determined that Democrats believe that the key to creating the liberal heaven-on-earth is in getting us all to die.
Yep. Dead as hell; that's what they want.
And I don't just mean the millionaires and billionaires.
They want you dead, me dead, Aunt Bessie and Uncle Moe too.
Let's take, for example, one of their newest proposals to raise taxes under the banner of tax "reform" or "revenue" enhancement.
According to the Democrats' notion of things, the first step in this reform is that:1) YOU DIE.
Problem solved!
Because it's only after you are dead that they can confiscate your life savings, family farm or the small community bank that your family spent a lifetime building on behalf of a gracious government.
Of course, the government will then take the proceeds from your life savings, family farm or the small community bank that your family spent a lifetime building to study the gas emanations of the endangered New Mexican Painted Ring Worm.
And can you blame them? Monty Python-Bring out your dead!
LIVE people would never pay for something as stupid as Ring Worm Gas studies- even live liberals. So you can see how important these death taxes can be to our long-term fiscal health given that our population- outside of Washington- mostly consists of "live" people with an occasional unsouled, undead guy like George Soros thrown in.
And given how many really dumb ideas that congress and the president have, I think I can see a pandemic coming on.
So, maybe it's just my personal taste, but I'm reluctant to endorse any scheme that rewards the government for my death.
Don't quote me on this, but I think that was one of the implied arguments in the Federalist Papers or the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence.
I vaguely recall something about life, liberty, property, as opposed to, say, death, taxes and Federal Grants for Parched Southwestern Scientists who Look at your Death as a Significant Line Item in the Federal Budget for Ring Worm Studies.
So let's agree that the whole "die and the government benefits" scheme seems sketchy to me.
And in a way, it seems to me not just ironic, but also poetic-and scary- that the ideology that considers death foolish for something as meaningful as liberty or freedom would promote death as a patriotic duty once death gets enshrined into their Bible known as the federal register.
And that takes us to another notable Democrat reform that requires your death.
Step one (1) in Obama's healthcare "reform" isn't: YOU DIE.
No; in this revenue "savings" scheme known as healthcare "reform" they leave the part where you die to an end of their choosing.
Budget deficits? You die.
Healthcare inflation? You die.
Reliably conservative member of Supreme Court? Bingo!
And, by the way, I've been meaning to tell you: For the sake of those federally-subsidized, Southwest scientists, your death is going WAAAY over budget this year.
They REALLY need the proceeds from your life savings, family farm or the small community bank that your family spent a lifetime building.
THIS year... please. They are waiting.
Now how are the Democrats going to manage voter registration reform?
Oh wait....

Enjoy the schadenfreude!: College professors face layoffs because of ObamaCare

The excited grins we saw in the sea of faces at Barack Obama’s second Inauguration told us we lost and the socialists won.
They made sure we understood that. Liberal talking heads on television and radio as well as in print and in the blogosphere have been taunting us since November and there is no reason to think they will stop any time soon.
Their jobs are now safe for as far as the eye can see. “..segment of Obama supporters are learning that elections have consequences and being on the winning side doesn’t guarantee good times ahead.
America’s college professors, especially adjunct (part time non-tenured) professors are “getting it” now. Harvard University’s Center for Responsive Politics has complied data on the political leanings of those who teach at America’s colleges.
It reports that on average college faculties donate to Democrats over Republicans by a rate of 4 to 1, but in some schools that rate goes up to 99% as in the College of William and Mary. “…these professors are learning real life economic lessons courtesy of the provisions of Obamacare.
The stories of colleges beginning to cut back teaching hours for their adjunct professors (the foot soldiers of America’s higher education industry), are making their way to public knowledge.
In December, only a month after he most likely voted for Barack Obama, an adjunct professor at an Ohio school, opened a letter telling him that “in order to avoid penalties under the Affordable Care Act… employees with part-time or adjunct status will not be assigned more than an average of 29 hours per week.”
The cut will cost him $2,000.00 a year, and this guy crying that he can’t afford the cut. Gee aint that a terrible thing?....

Is Anybody Surprised that Krugman Was Wrong about U.K. Fiscal Policy?

Just like in the United States, politicians in the United Kingdom use the deceptive practice of “baseline budgeting” as part of fiscal policy.
This means the politicians can increase spending, but simultaneously claim they are cutting spending because the budget could have expanded at an even faster pace.
Sort of like saying your diet is successful because you’re only gaining two pounds a week rather than five pounds.
Anyhow, some people get deluded by this chicanery. Paul Krugman, for instance, complained in 2011 that “the government of Prime Minister David Cameron chose instead to move to immediate, unforced austerity, in the belief that private spending would more than make up for the government’s pullback.”
This was nonsense. There have not been any genuine budget cuts in the United Kingdom. Heck, just compare what’s happening today in the United Kingdom and what happened in Canada in the 1990s to see the difference between gimmickry and real fiscal restraint.
Now we have some new numbers that confirm that the UK economy is suffering because of a heavy burden of government spending.
Here’s some of what Allister Heath, the Editor of City A.M., wrote for the UK-based Telegraph.The public finances are deteriorating again, making a mockery of the Coalition’s core purpose. Osborne’s fatal problem is that he is proving unable to deliver any meaningful reduction in the size of the state. The extent of his failure will come as a shock to many. Remarkably, public spending actually went up last year as a share of our national income… public spending hit 49pc of UK GDP last year, a shocking increase on the 48.6pc of GDP spent by the state in 2011. Even with a stagnant economy, this implies that Osborne has lost control of public spending.
Gee, doesn’t sound like much budget cutting to me.
Heck, the burden of government spending is worse than it is in Germany (45 percent of GDP). Or even Spain (44 percent) or Portugal (47.4 percent).
Perhaps the most shocking number is the one showing that the UK has radically veered in the wrong direction this century.Public spending as a share of GDP hit a trough of just 36.6pc in 2000.
Allister hits the nail on the head.…after all the rows about “slashing spending to the bone”, and following almost three years of coalition government, the state is still spending around half of national income. …it beggars belief that a government that remains so large, so bloated cannot provide much better quality services, and that we have a public debate in this country that exaggerates beyond all recognition the extent of the state’s downsizing.
But there has been some “austerity,” but only for taxpayers.…real austerity is only biting on the tax side: total UK government revenues increased from 40.3pc of GDP in 2011 to 42.4pc in 2012, the OECD estimates. It’s getting increasingly hard for the Chancellor to extract revenues, with taxes on income and wealth falling to £194.3bn over 2012 as a whole, 2.7pc lower than in 2011, when they stood at £199.7bn, according to separate figures from the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
That last sentence, by the way, shows the Laffer Curve in action. The supposedly Conservative government of Cameron and Osborne has raised the tax burden, yet revenues aren’t materializing.
Allister also echoes the argument of Veronique de Rugy about choosing the right kind of austerity and reining in the public sector.Not all kinds of austerity were created equal: cutting current expenditure, such as benefits, is good for growth; but hiking taxes is bad for it… There is also lots of evidence that elevated levels of public spending and large government debts are bad for GDP; no wonder, therefore, that growth is failing to materialise.
So what’s the bottom line? Well, as Allister stated, the real problem is that government is too big and spending too much.
And until Cameron and Osborne are willing to tackle that problem, don’t expect much positive from the United Kingdom.

Obama Asks Military Leaders If They Will “Fire On US Citizens” ["Litmus Test"]

2009 Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jim Garrow shockingly claims he was told by a top military veteran that the Obama administration’s “litmus test” for new military leaders is whether or not they will obey an order to fire on U.S. citizens.
Garrow was nominated three years ago for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize and is the founder of The Pink Pagoda Girls, an organization dedicated to rescuing baby girls from “gendercide” in China. Garrow has been personally involved in “helping rescue more than 36,000 Chinese baby girls from death.” He is a public figure, not an anonymous voice on the Internet, which makes his claim all the more disturbing.
“I have just been informed by a former senior military leader that Obama is using a new “litmus test” in determining who will stay and who must go in his military leaders. Get ready to explode folks. “The new litmus test of leadership in the military is if they will fire on US citizens or not”. Those who will not are being removed,” Garrow wrote on his Facebook page, later following up the post by adding the man who told him is, “one of America’s foremost military heroes,” whose goal in divulging the information was to “sound the alarm.”
Garrow’s claim is even more explosive given that the country is in the throes of a national debate about gun control, with gun rights advocates keen to insist that the founders put the second amendment in the Constitution primarily as a defense against government tyranny.
It also follows reports on Sunday that General James Mattis, head of the United States Central Command, “is being told to vacate his office several months earlier than planned.”
Concerns over US troops being given orders to fire on American citizens in the event of mass gun confiscation first arose in 1995 when hundreds of Marines at 29 Palms, California were given a survey as part of an academic project by Navy Lieutenant Commander Ernest Guy Cunningham which asked the Marines if they would, “Fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the United States government.”
The survey was subsequently leaked because many of the Marines who took it were shocked by the tone of the question.
The US Military has clearly outlined innumerable civil emergency scenarios under which troops would be authorized to fire on U.S. citizens.
In July 2012, the process by which this could take place was made clear in a leaked US Army Military Police training manual for “Civil Disturbance Operations” (PDF) dating from 2006. Similar plans were also outlined in an updated manual released in 2010 entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations.
The 2006 document outlines how military assets will be used to “help local and state authorities to restore and maintain law and order” in the event of mass riots, civil unrest or a declaration of martial law.
On page 20 of the manual, rules regarding the use of “deadly force” in confronting “dissidents” on American soil are made disturbingly clear with the directive that a, “Warning shot will not be fired.”
Given that second amendment advocates are now being depicted as dangerous terrorists by the federal government and local law enforcement, Garrow’s claim is sure to stoke controversy given that Americans are seeing their gun rights eviscerated while the federal government itself stockpiles billions of bullets.
Last week, Gloversville Mayor Dayton King warned that any federal gun confiscation program could lead to a “Waco-style standoff” in rural areas of America.

Gun Running Obama

Stolen Election

Obama Cements His Legacy

Newsweek stopped its print edition at the end of 2012, but they still tried to scandalize the country by producing a fake cover honoring Obama's second inauguration as "The Second Coming." This absurd attempt at myth making is a natural progression. The "cover" story was written by Evan Thomas, who proclaimed on MSNBC a few years ago that Obama was "sort of like God" in being above the gritty political fray.
It was just as absurd when Newsweek writer David Frum, the formerly conservative Bush speechwriter, tweeted this piece of media-elite nonsense: "First term Obama: punchee, 2nd term Obama, puncher."
No one calling himself a "political observer" can say Obama was some sort of mute victim, consistently under fire, on defense over the last four years. Quote Obama from anywhere, and he's fiercely bashing the GOP. In April 2011, he said the House GOP budget plan would force "poor children," "children with autism" and "kids with disabilities" to "fend for themselves." In another 2011 speech, he described the Republican plan as "let's have dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance."
These aren't even the Obama-Biden 2012 TV ads. They were pure gutter sleaze.
In truth, the media elites want Obama to destroy conservatives. Too far-fetched, you say? Slate.com published an article by John Dickerson on Jan. 18 headlined "Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party."
This "reporter" is the political director of CBS News. The spirit of Dan Rather remains.
Dickerson said Obama doesn't want to rest on his first-term laurels. So "Obama's only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents." He needs "clarifying fights over controversial issues" so "he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition's most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray."
We're informed that "extreme" conservatism, as defined by the Tea Party or the NRA, should be "illegitimate." This is precisely what CBS was selling about Ronald Reagan 32 years ago. Dickerson wants Obama to be liberal enough to spur "more tin-eared, dooming declarations of absolutism like those made by conservatives who sought to define the difference between legitimate and illegitimate rape -- and handed control of the Senate to Democrats along the way."
In imagining a slow political suicide of the American right, Dickerson isn't so much out in front of Obama as helpfully channeling Obama. On Saturday's "Early Show" on CBS, Dickerson explained Obama's thinking: "We heard in his press conference this week -- which is, confrontation has to be the order of the day. He's tried to work with Republicans and as he said, you know, I could have more parties with them but it doesn't change the way they behave."
It's preposterous that a "journalist" would say all this. It is mind-boggling to consider he actually believes this.
Another CBS star, Bob Schieffer, demonstrated the media's impatience with anything but a fervently leftist Obama in a second term. After the president made a speech for more gun control, Schieffer leaned on history to insist that beating the "gun lobby" has to be easier than killing Osama bin Laden or "defeating the Nazis."
Schieffer argued, "the president is going to have to do more than just make a speech about it. This is one of the best speeches I've ever heard him deliver, but it's going to take more than that from the White House. He's going to have to get his hands dirty."
Liberal journalists don't want lofty oratory in the second term. They want conservatives defeated and "delegitimized." They want a smash-mouth Obama who accomplishes their agenda of "responding to the threat of climate change," and marriages for our "gay brothers and sisters" in all 50 states, and amnesty for "bright young students" so they "will be enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country." All of these and more were promised to liberals in Obama's second inaugural address.
Richard Stevenson at The New York Times passed along the Orwellian echo of Obama's "unapologetic argument that modern liberalism was perfectly consistent with the spirit of the founders."
The battle is joined. The only question left is whether the Republicans will have the will to fight.